


Take Me Apart, Put Me Together

by rivendellrose



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M, Section 31 (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: Ash knows he's not a good fit at Section 31, and he doesn't especially care what they think of why he left. Even if the circumstances look more than a bit suspicious.
Relationships: L'Rell/Ash Tyler | Voq
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	Take Me Apart, Put Me Together

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as usual to [gaslightgallows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows) for encouraging my nonsense. And a big sorrynotsorry to everyone who very understandably thinks I should stop beating the obviously-dead horse of my unending dissatisfaction with the end of season 2. Believe it or not, not _all_ my ideal fixes for the finale involve Ash and L'Rell getting together. It's just that somehow those are the ones that keep getting written to completion, because the "Actually, Ash and Michael still belong together" ones wind up feeling a lot more self-indulgent and, frankly, lack even the vaguest hint of story in favor of me just going "NUH-UH" at canon. So those stay in my head, while these ones... keep getting posted.
> 
> So... sorry that I'm not sorry, I guess.

Ash Tyler was pretty sure he knew what it was going to say in his Section 31 file after he left: "Psychological breakdown, no longer suitable for service." They'd probably list some precipitating factors, and some of them might even be true, like the fact that he'd tried to reconnect with his family while he was on earth, but could never shake the feeling that he was a usurper trying to take a dead man's place. As if he was apologizing for killing his mother's only child.

And anyway, trying to run Section 31 hadn't exactly left a lot of time to relax at home and try to rehabilitate his relationships. He was far from the first agent there to have a nervous breakdown, if that was what they were going to call it. Most of the time it was just the stress and the secrets and the endless, endless machinations and trying to think three steps ahead of everything. And that probably would have been enough to drive Ash mad, if he'd given it the time. How he'd ever thought he could handle running that kind of organization, he could no longer imagine. It had to be Voq's unending, grasping ambition that had done it -- the same ambition that had made him think he could step into T'Kuvma's place and the position of Torchbearer, with absolutely no reason to think that anyone would follow him. He'd been caught up in that oh-so-Klingon tendency to leap into big gestures and grand, bragging statements, and the next thing he knew he was trying to keep ahead of underlings who were, to be frank, not just hungrier and more ambitious than he was, but about a million times more cunning.

Eventually, it became clear that one of them in particular would make a much better agency head than he was turning out to be, and Ash couldn't shake the sense that if he didn't give her the chance to do it, he'd definitely regret it, and possibly wake up one morning to a nice, poisoned mug of hot raktajino. And he couldn't even really have blamed her, because, honestly, he sucked at this job. Running security on a starship was all about being quick on your feet and a good shot with a phaser, protecting the captain and the rest of your crew when encounters turned violent, and having a knack for conflict de-escalation when the crew had spent too much time together. It didn’t hurt to be a good pilot, either, and handy with tactical maneuvers and photon torpedoes. All of which Ash Tyler was. What running Section 31 was about was mostly lying and being sneaky. Which Ash Tyler was not good at. The only time he’d actually been a good spy had been because he hadn’t known he was one.

So he did what was right. He quietly maneuvered the agent who was good at this stuff and had the best natural morals as far as he could tell into the position to take over the agency, and then made the announcement that had been on the tip of his tongue ever since his second day there: "I'm out. I'll stay on as a security consultant, for now, but... just that. No more."

The question, after that, was where the hell else he could go when ‘for now’ was over. And when the answer arrived, Ash couldn't say he was too surprised by the face it wore.

"Ash Tyler." L'Rell stepped out of the crowd at a conference hall, making him momentarily doubt the effectiveness of the security sweep that he and another consultant had been doing on the hall before he realized she was an invited guest. She looked… well, unsurprised to see him, for one. Even happy. And also beautiful, with her golden eyes gleaming and her gray skin almost pearly against the thick black velvet of her gown. His heart leaped when her next words were, "Come home."

But they’d already tried that once, and it had not gone well for either of them. "I'm fine here," he said. "It's like my old job on Discovery, just..." What? "Less exciting," he finally finished. "Maybe that's for the best. It’s good to see you again, though.”

She glanced around the conference hall, then dismissed it. "You don't belong here."

"And I do belong on Qo’noS?"

She chuckled softly, and Ash’s heart lurched again. "You knew immediately where I meant when I said 'home,' did you not? And you cannot really be pleased with this job, forever minding dull ambassadors and dignitaries. Keeping them from hurting themselves on their dull weapons."

What else was he supposed to do? And yet she was right. To spend the rest of his life doing security sweeps for conferences and diplomats, slowly becoming the security equivalent of a janitor? It wasn't just the Klingon part of him that railed against that idea. But where else could he go? Where else would he be welcome? And now here was L'Rell, giving him a way out. A place where he could belong, and someone to stand beside. He remembered fighting back to back with her, and his fingers tingled, itching to hold a sword again instead of a low-level phase pistol.

"Why now?" he asked.

"I have need of someone I can trust."

And it was that simple. He signed his resignation papers and left them on his former underling's desk that very afternoon, joined L'Rell's entourage at the conference that evening, and, if he was honest, wasn't terribly surprised to find himself in her bed that night. After what had happened with Michael, he hadn't felt safe taking a human lover again, and if any of his coworkers at Section 31 had ever showed interest, he'd always been sure it was for the wrong reasons. L'Rell, though -- she knew what she was getting into with him, and he knew what he was getting with her. Her long black gown with its heavy gold embroidery had fallen to the ground almost before the doors to her quarters closed behind them, and the thick gold choker and circlet that she wore followed soon after.

He had a sense, stretched out naked beneath the perfectly controlled point of L'Rell's dagger as she etched the finest, most delicate lines of blood out of his skin while she drew him off with her mouth, that the mix of pain and pleasure wasn't tearing him apart, but slowly twining and splicing him back together like the cut and loosed strands of a cord, and then braiding that cord back against itself into something stronger and more sure.

As much as he'd wanted to be, he didn't know how to be just Ash Tyler, Starfleet lieutenant, anymore. He didn't know how to be just Voq, son of none, anymore, either. He'd never really been Agent Tyler, head of Section 31, even though he'd pretended and done his best for a little while. He was someone else. And L'Rell was the only person in the universe who seemed to take who he was now at face value and not find one part or the other of him horrifying.

So if it said in his file that he'd been lured away by his former torturer, that there were clearly deep-seated psychological issues at work on him, if they even offered a long-distance diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome, he didn't care. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he could finally try to just be who he was, and see where that took him.


End file.
